AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Review: The Best Ever PC Processor?

Hot on the heels of AMD's stunning Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X (see my full launch article) are the non X-editions of those CPUs, and I've finally finished benchmarking them - the Ryzen 5 2600 and Ryzen 7 2700. Today I'll be taking a close look at the former, which is the cheapest 6-core/12-thread model of the new lineup, in content creation, overclocking and all-important game benchmarks.

AMD's 2nd Gen Ryzen 5 2600Antony Leather

First, we need to set the scene, so cast your minds back to this time last year when AMD was in the midst of releasing its first-generation Ryzen CPUs. Among the numerous four, six, eight — all the way up to 16-core CPUs that hit retailer's shelves during 2017 — were a couple of gems, and the most precious of those stones was the Ryzen 5 1600. It was a great value, costing less than Intel's overclockable quad-cores, but outstripping them by big margins in many benchmarks, and once overclocked proved a great CPU.

For me it was a great mid-range all-rounder - a crown it wrestled from Intel's Core i5-7600K. It lacked a little grunt in some games, but elsewhere it was usually a far better choice than Intel's quad-core CPU. Coupled with numerous price cuts, which now see it retailing for less than$180, it's still great value, but as Intel's Coffee Lake and more recently AMD's second generation Ryzen CPUs have shown, the original Ryzen models did lack performance in lightly threaded tasks, including some game titles. With the Ryzen 5 2600, though, AMD is looking to shake up the mid-range $200 CPU market and once again offer the best value all-round CPU in a six-core package.

How to overclock the Ryzen 5 2600

To do this, the Ryzen 5 2600 has the same lower latencies as all 12nm Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge CPUs as well as their enhanced boosting algorithms - Precision Boost 2 and XFR 2. It also has higher frequencies out of the box compared to its predecessor too - the Ryzen 5 1600 has a 200MHz lower base frequency and 250MHz lower maximum boost frequency.

The Ryzen 5 2600 comes with the Wraith Stealth coolerAntony Leather

Everything else is the same, such as the cache, with 19MB in total, as well as the cores and threads — six and 12 — and the TDP, which remains at a relatively low 65W. One thing that isn't the same, though, is the price, which has fallen along with most other CPUs in the last 12 months, and now sits at $199 for the Ryzen 5 2600. This is $20 less than its predecessor cost at launch and also $30 less than the Ryzen 5 2600X. It already seems like a bargain given Intel's Core i5-8600K costs $40 more. Enough on specifications and scene-setting, though — let's take a look at performance.

Test systems

Both my Intel and AMD systems use the latest Windows 10 updates and drivers, including updates and motherboard BIOS versions to patch the latest Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities, which are known to impact performance. The numbers you see here are exactly what you'd get on a real-world, up-to-date system.

I've tested each CPU at stock speed and then also at the maximum safe overclock I could achieve with each of my samples. I've used 3000MHz memory for testing, but I should stress that you'll see a much better performance from AMD CPUs if you use faster memory. I'd like to thank AMD for sending me the official second-generation Ryzen press pack including the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel for the Core i7-8700K, Overclockers UK for the Core i5-8600K, Corsair for the memory and PSU, Zotac for the graphics card, Samsung for the SSDs, Cooler Master for the processor cooler and Asus and MSI for the motherboards.

Cinebench and HandBrake are two multi-threaded benchmarks that make use of all a CPUs cores and threads. Cinebench is a real-world rendering-program benchmark while HandBrake is a real-world application, and here I've converted a video file as a benchmark.

Cinebench single core performanceAntony Leather

Cinebench multi-core performanceAntony Leather

HandBrake performanceAntony Leather

PC Mark 10 is a system benchmark and I've used the individual photo editing test to gauge performance using scores obtained by running the benchmark.

PC Mark 10 photo editing performanceAntony Leather

Gaming

Ashes of the Singularity performance was obtained using the built-in CPU benchmark. It responds well to CPU frequency and the number of cores and threads a CPU has.

Ashes of the Singularity performanceAntony Leather

Deus Ex is a reasonably CPU-dependent game, especially when you're using a high-end graphics card such as the GTX 1080 I used in testing. I used the game's built-in benchmark to obtain results.

Deus Ex performanceAntony Leather

Final Fantasy XV is a classic example of a game that's more graphics card-bound than CPU-bound, but it's important to show that some games simply aren't affected by CPU performance or optimization and than you'll see no difference between AMD or Intel in these titles.

Final Fantasy XV performanceAntony Leather

Unigine Superposition is a synthetic benchmark and more proof that CPU performance doesn't always matter when it comes to gaming.

Unigine SuperPosition performanceAntony Leather

VR Mark leans towards high single core performance and as a result, responds to overclocking as well as high boost frequencies.

VR Mark performanceAntony Leather

World of Tanks Encore is a benchmark testing the new Core graphics engine recently introduced in the game. I use fraps to record the frame rates over a one-minute section of gameplay. It's proven to be more graphics card than CPU-limited.

World Of Tanks (enCore performance)Antony Leather

Fallout 4 is another game that benefits little from CPU performance unless you're using a particularly slow CPU. However, it's still popular and relevant as an example of an easy-to-run game.

Fallout 4 performanceAntony Leather

Power Consumption

These tests are fairly self-explanatory. I measure the power consumption for the system as a whole at stock speed and when overclocked, with the system at idle and with the CPU under load.

Stock power consumtionAntony Leather

Overclocked power consumptionAntony Leather

Performance discussion

To start with, the biggest improvement came in overclocking, with my sample reaching 4.15GHz, which is 250MHz higher than my Ryzen 5 1600 will go with the same voltage of 1.425V. Starting with Cinebench, the Ryzen 5 2600 is noticeably quicker than its predecessor, adding 7% to the score at stock speed and 8% when overclocked. In fact, this was just a fraction behind the overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X and faster than Intel's Core i7-8700K at stock speed, nearly matching the stock speed 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 as well. It outstrips the Core i5-8600K by big margins too, even with the latter overclocked to 5GHz — amazing for a $200 CPU.

AMD's single-core performance highlighted in the second Cinebench test still lags behind Intel, but it's made big gains here with second-generation Ryzen. The Ryzen 5 2600 is quicker than every other first-generation Ryzen CPU and comes close to matching Intel's Core i5-8600K when overclocked, and faster memory will close the gap even more. Video encoding saw similar results, with HandBrake showing the Ryzen 5 2600 is equivalent to the Ryzen 5 1600X at stock speed and matches the Ryzen 7 1700 when overclocked, as well as matching the overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X. Even when overclocked to 5GHz, the Core i5-8600K was still 8% slower.

AMD's Ryznen 5 2600Antony Leather

For gaming, I don't want to gloss over similar results, but the likes of World of Tanks enCore and Fallout 4 are simply graphics card-limited with the CPUs I'm testing here, which are all fairly powerful and sport at least six cores. Intel has a small lead in Fallout 4 with noticeably higher average frame rates, but it's in Deus Ex and Ashes of the Singularity that the real differences emerge. Deus Ex shows some big improvements for AMD, with a 7% boost to the minimum frame rate compared to the Ryzen 5 1600. Interestingly, the Ryzen 5 2600X is only a little quicker and the two 2600-series CPUs perform identically once overclocked.

While Intel still has a lead here, it's important to state the impact memory speed had with the Ryzen 7 2700X, which managed a minimum frame rate of 71fps using 3400MHz memory. I didn't have time to test the Ryzen 5 2600 with the faster stuff here, but I have no doubt it would be well into the 70fps area, closing the gap on Intel. Ashes of the Singularity loves high frequencies and lots of cores, so it's no surprise to see both the Core i7-8700K and Ryzen 7 2700X at the top of the charts. The Ryzen 5 2600 was less impressive here, although it's still quicker than its predecessor and matched the Ryzen 5 2600X when overclocked too.

One final great result is the power consumption. At just 124W under load at stock speed, it was the most power-frugal CPU I tested and even when overclocked it only drew a little more power than the Intel Core i5-8600K.

Is this the best all-round ever desktop processor?

The Ryzen 5 2600 doesn't top the performance graphs, but performance isn't the only deciding factor when it comes to being a great value product. It's $40 cheaper than the Core i5-8600K and $30 cheaper than the Ryzen 5 2600X, yet beats the former in every content creation test I tried and matches the latter once overclocked too. There are still a few game titles where Intel is faster, but coupled with faster RAM, those gaps are far smaller than they were last year.

You need to overclock it get the most out of it, but this is very easy to do, and once pushed above 4GHz, it offers unbeatable value for just $200. If that's you're budget and your PC use varies between gaming and content creation, look no further than the Ryzen 5 2600.

I’m a technology journalist with a 20-year interest in PCs and I've been writing about PC hardware for a decade in publications such as bit-tech.net and Custom PC magazine. I’ve been building and modifying PCs for 20 years, with a keen interest in liquid cooling and PC modd...